


Hurt

by AlwaysKatie7



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-28
Updated: 2017-06-28
Packaged: 2018-11-19 23:52:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,973
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11324316
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlwaysKatie7/pseuds/AlwaysKatie7
Summary: "It's okay to hurt and breakdown. You don't have to be strong all the time." Harry and Ginny have a conversation after the battle.





	Hurt

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: Based off a tumblr prompt: "it's okay to hurt and breakdown. You don't have to be strong all the time." Requested for Harry x Ginny. Enjoy!

  

“It’s okay to hurt, Harry! You don’t have to be so bloody strong all the time!”

 

The words are hard, abrasive, hurled at him in anger after weeks of him acting completely, infuriatingly _composed_.  Ginny waits, her fiery hair whipping across her face as she crosses her arms over her chest and dares him to answer her. She desperately wants him to scream back, to take the bait, to yell or to cry. Anything to let her know that he still cares, still _feels_. Anything to end the weird, silent standoff they’ve been in ever since returning home.

 

She wants—more than anything—for him to just _talk_ to her. Let her in. But all he does is stare back at her blankly. So she turns on her heels and is out the door, and it is all she can do to stumble through the yard before collapsing, hunching over by the shed and tearing her hands across her wet eyes to prevent them from spilling over.         

 

A month has passed since the final battle. A month of press coverage and reparations and funerals. And he hasn’t once lost it. Not _once_ let himself be vulnerable. Not to her. Instead, he holds her hand through the funerals, his grip never too tight. He cradles his godson Teddy with a gentleness that makes her heart break. He holds himself off to the side as her family clings to one another, busying himself with their next meal when her mum can’t bring herself to cook. He kisses her reverently each morning and sneaks into her room to lie with her at night—but she still doesn’t know where they stand. Not really. He doesn’t tell her a thing, and she doesn’t ask. She waits. And Ginny Weasley’s gotten bloody tired of waiting.

 

If only being close to him was enough…but it’s not. She had thought that it would be, last year as she thought desperately of him to keep herself going. It was all she had longed for—his very _nearness_ —all those nights as she lay in her four poster at Hogwarts and dreamt of him, praying that he was safe. Praying that he was _alive_. That maybe, someday, Voldemort would be defeated and things could go back to how they once were, when they had been together and everything had seemed easier due alone to that simple fact.

In some ways, they _have_ gone back. From the way that Harry kisses her, she’s absolutely certain that they’ve gotten back together without the question having to be asked. And when he lies next to her, his skin brushing against hers, she can almost trick herself into forgetting just how much everything has changed. Even so, she can’t ignore the hesitancy now present that was never there before; something too reserved, too careful, too still, that permeates every touch and every word between them. It is that something that leaves her feeling lonelier than ever.

 

There’s so much she wants to say to him, but it’s never seemed like the right time. He has been steady and gentle and caring, but it is a comfort that never goes deeper than the surface. He shies away from conversation about anything important, anything that would mean confronting all that has happened—that would make all of it finally seem real. But she’s not sure how much longer she can go on pretending to be strong, and she’s certain she can no longer sit by quietly as he does the same.

 

Or maybe she’s just misreading it. Maybe he’s just better at coping. For her, it’s too much. Fred. Remus. Tonks. _Harry_. The weight of the past year is starting to suffocate her, so that it’s hard to get through even a moment. She doesn’t know how she made it this long, really. It was only a matter of time until the breakdown. Still, she finds herself trying to stop the tears even as they break free from her eyes and roll down her face. After all, Ginny’s never been one for vulnerability. Neither has he. That’s the whole problem, isn’t it?

 

From a distance comes the sound of feet shuffling against grass, and she knows that it’s him without having to look. Of course he would follow her out here. Reflexively, she moves to dry her eyes. Ridiculous as it is, she still doesn’t want to let him see her fall apart. There’s a soft thud as he lowers himself beside her and leans against the shed. She focuses on her fingernails in a fruitless effort to stop sniffling.

 

After a moment, Harry nudges her gently. “You know…it’s okay to hurt. You don’t have to be strong _all_ the time.” He pauses, then softly adds, “Somebody really brilliant once told me that.”

 

Ginny looks up to meet his eyes at last, and offers him a small smile in return for his efforts, still wiping at her face. “Brilliant, huh?”

 

“Yes, brilliant. Smart. Kind. Fierce…” He nudges her again, this time raising an eyebrow, “And _incredibly_ sexy.”

 

Ginny chuckles, but it comes out as more of a choke through her tears. “Sexy too? She sounds too good to be true.”

 

“The very best,” Harry whispers, speaking with such a sincerity that it makes her heart drop right through her chest.

 

She reaches out to grasp his hand in her own, linking their fingers together and squeezing his tightly. “Thank you,” she whispers back. She means “I love you,” but she can’t quite form the words. Not yet. It’s too soon after her world fell apart. She’s still trying to pick up all the broken pieces. There’s no room for anything else.

 

Somehow, Harry seems to understand. He squeezes her hand back just as fiercely, and whatever string has been holding her together all this time snaps in an instant. It doesn’t take longer than the moment that the first sob escapes for Harry to pull her closer, bringing her head down to his shoulder and running a steady hand through her hair, planting kisses on her scalp as she loses it completely.

 

“You died,” she chokes out accusingly.

 

Out of everything Ginny could have said to explain her sudden breakdown, this seems to be the last thing Harry was expecting. The surprise, however, doesn’t linger on his features. He simply murmurs, “It seemed like the only thing to do at the time,” and pulls her even closer, a slight crack in his voice the only indication that he has been taken aback by her words.

 

“You didn’t even say goodbye,” Ginny continues, her own voice almost a whisper. And there it is—the thought that has been gnawing at her for weeks, keeping her up at night—out in the open at last.

 

All he says is, “It would have been too hard.”

 

“ _Too hard?”_ Ginny snaps back, pulling away from him as though burned. “Too hard was watching Hagrid carry out your body and thinking that I was going to have to bury it next to my brother! Too hard was hearing McGonagall scream and seeing Ron and Hermione seize up and Neville on fire and knowing that you’d sacrificed yourself without even having the decency to tell someone you were going to do it! To tell _me!_ I didn’t even—” she stops, wiping frantically at her tears to try and compose herself enough to continue, “I didn’t even get to tell you I loved you. You didn’t even give me a moment to hold on to. _That_ was too hard.”

 

There’s a tear in Harry’s eye now, but it’s only the one. He’s looking resolutely at the sky instead of at her. “Ginny,” he starts, his voice infuriatingly steady, “I wouldn’t have gone through with it if you had said that. Just hearing your voice it—that alone would have been enough to stop me. And I needed to do it! It was the only way. I need you to understand that.”

 

And the scary part is, she does. She gets it. She bloody gets why her boyfriend (not really her boyfriend at the time, she supposes, but nevertheless, _hers_ ), would deliberately walk to his own death at the hands of the darkest wizard who’s ever lived, and not tell a single soul that he was going to do it. It’s the same reason he’s done every crazy he’s done. It’s the same reason she loves him. He wanted to save them. That doesn’t mean she isn’t angry.

 

“I’m here now though, right? It’s all in the past.”

 

_But it isn’t!_ she wants to scream, _It’s not!_ _You died!_ _How can you be so calm about that!_ She still sees him as he was in Hagrid’s arms, limp and lifeless, every time she closes her eyes. She still can’t stop thinking about a world without him. “Not for me,” she says rigidly.

 

“Ginny….” He begins, but the patience in his voice, though perhaps a little strained, is enough to set her over the edge.

 

“Why the hell are you so okay, Harry? You _died_. You died and it’s all I can see, all I can _think_ about.... I’m going crazy and you, you’re just fine, aren’t you!”

 

She immediately regrets saying it. It’s like a deep, dark secret, those words, and she hates herself for even thinking them, let alone _voicing_ them. She shouldn’t begrudge her boyfriend for being well. That shouldn’t be how things are.

 

But it’s too late. It’s Harry’s turn to snap, and his voice at last has an edge as he says, “I’m not fine, Ginny! Of course I’m not fine!”

 

“Well you’re doing a bloody good job at pretending!” Ginny says, nearly shouting now, tears flowing from the corners of eyes against her will, “Why won’t you just—why won’t you talk to me?” Her voice loses its bite as it fizzles out imploringly.

 

Harry, too, seems to deflate. His whole body sags and his breathing becomes heavy in a way that is excruciating and comforting all at once. The pause that follows seems to extend for edges. When at last he meets her eyes, Ginny feels a surge of love for him so strong that she wants to pull him toward her before he’s even spoken a word. “I’m afraid, Ginny,” he whispers truthfully. “I’m afraid that if I let myself fall apart, I’ll never come back, like I’ll—I’ll go off the edge. How the hell do you move on from being ‘The Chosen One’? What if it’s something I can’t come back from? I want to be able to enjoy the life I fought for. I deserve that.” He says the last part sternly, as if trying to convince himself of its truth.

 

Gently, Ginny takes his hand again and scoots close enough to press her body against his, laying her head on his shoulder. “Wanting to be okay doesn’t automatically make you so. You can’t force yourself into being fine when you’re not.” She can feel him shaking against her. “I want to get through this with you, together. We can. I know it.”

 

Harry’s free hand reaches up to wipe at his face, where the tears are now steadily falling, but Ginny pulls it down. “It’s okay,” she says softly, “It’s okay.”

 

And then he’s crying against her, and whispering his apologizes—for pushing her away, for holding too much in, for dying—and she’s crying too. As he lists them all off, she strokes his hair and whispers to him her best words of comfort. From an outside perspective, she knows that they’re more of a mess than ever. Two broken teenagers in the wake of a war. Still, Ginny finds that, for the first time since the battle, she actually believes that they might be okay.

 

After all, they made it home.


End file.
